And I’m reading back old philosophy books from college – everything to help build the creepy personality of something with too much time on its hands to think…

And the logo you found works pretty well, methinks. You can scribble it easy as a circle with outgoing arrows. Nifty.

Eric Maziades last blog post..Kobold Keep Remix Finale – Showdown

This my dear friends, is a runaway idea all right.

And I LOVE those.

I wrote a 5 page adventure in the space of one afternoon for something that was only supposed to a throwaway adventure for 3 of my players who couldn’t bear to wait for next week’s game.

In it I already created 2 new City Factions, a slice of the City’s history and several examples of the dungeons’ involvement in the various areas the PCs will explore.

Heck it might be good enough to make it into a full 5k word writeup! We’ll see how it goes tomorrow!

Expect a game report next week!

The dungeon can withdraw power from these sites, but creating them is a drain, so it is not inclined to destroy them without good reason. Hence, with good play a bunch of adventurers just might be able to use one before it figures out what is happening.

Also, using any two times is unlikely, as the dungeon will withdraw its power from sites profaned by intruders. Hence, only one-time boosts. Say, for the next encounter or day.

Maybe there’s something similar in the city: Those who take an oath to protect it and never step outside its walls get benefits as long as the oath is unbroken. (Conveniently, they won’t be thrilled with looting random caverns due to the very oath. Hence, adventurers are useful.)

It’s good you have a reason why the enemies do what they do. Too many generic adventures have monsters killing adventurers for what seems to be sport. Maybe they are that evil, though!

Tahakkis last blog post..My Local Gaming Store – Or Lack Thereof

What if some of the denizens are empowered if they’re in the right area? Good guys, bad guys, however you want to spin it. Whether it’s Evil Clerics of This Hallway Right Here or crack commando town guards who rock socks if you’re being naughty in the town square but won’t set foot outside the walls because they’d lose a lot of strength, toughness, whatever. The only thing I don’t like about this idea is I’m not sure if your players would get interested in tricking opponents into moving the battle or if it would just sound like a gimmick.

Yes I’m thinking environmental changes and pushing dungeon denizens to do things that they aren’t sure why they do it.

Tahakkis last blog post..My Local Gaming Store – Or Lack Thereof

The way I’ve been doing it is to add elements to each encounter that showcase the dungeon’s influence. For instance, I have an encounter planned with Shadowhounds and the dungeon will dim the lighting of a random part of the dungeon map each round… (Shadowhounds have an aura that dim light further, so if they are lucky, they’ll be in complete darkness)

That’s the kind of thing I’m thinking.

Tahakkis last blog post..My Local Gaming Store – Or Lack Thereof

@D_Luck: I swear to god man, you scare me as a DM. If i ever play in one of your games, I’ll make sure never to grow too attached to my PC.

Seriously though, the inspiration I’ll take from Paranoia will be the relative insanity of the Dungeon’s multiple personality fragments (possibly the growth of the city is the cause of this fragmentation of the dungeon’s psyche) and possibly make the whole of City Within run a bit like Alpha Complex (Bureaucracy, factions, Secret societies, etc)…

…plus I feel that there will be a little silliness in all of it. What is a Megadungeon without a bit of wackiness no?

@Czarzhan: Your musings would make a great spark for a entire new campaign world. In fact, if my campaign lasts long enough, I may borrow it as the actions of the PCs could cause the dungeon’s psyche to collapse more than it has already and fracture in-something similar…. especially if one of the campaigns reveals is that the dungeon covers most of the volume of the planet.

@Lanir: This is all fantastic stuff you got there. Thanks for the triskelion tip! One thing worth noting, I won’t make it a campaign secret about the dungeon being alive. It’s going to be part of the campaign’s basic knowledge that something’s imprisoned somewhere very deep and influences the dungeon’s denizens.

I’m already cogitating a first adventure and will work on it today.

@Kevin: Gee man, thanks for the vote of confidence. As I said a few weeks ago, I’ll try the concept on my buddies and may work this up to something more later.

@Tommi: Yes! That’s exactly what I want. The Dungeon is going to be slow to react, being more likely to hatch plans than react to a infestation. Having points of Power that PC can knock out could very well become a mid-term goal of the campaign. Once such points are taken out, the city can grow into the reclaimed area and the dungeon must start planning anew to recapture it.

Great stuff!

@Mike Shea: Thunderspire Labyrinth is a great model to work from to build a sentient dungeon. In fact, with a few twists, you can have the Duergar, Gnolls and Paldemar work together to bring about the dungeon’s awakening.

I’m considering turning the Thunderspire Labyrinth into a super-dungeon, though, and it might be fun to have an overall personality.

Mike Sheas last blog post..D&D Dungeon Tile Tips

The dungeon can easily make life difficult for invaders: Stuck doors (but not for monsters), collapsing passages that block their way, wandering monsters, earth elementals or some other suitable direct manifestation of its will and earthen nature.

The challenge will be doing some real harm to the dungeon before it can react; if some intelligent creature figures out there’s dangerous surface-dwellers incoming, it might alert the dungeon and then there’ll be a world of trouble. (Skill challenge, for example, each failure adding more obstacles on the way.)

Maybe there are some anchors the dungeon must use for extending its power: Specific creatures, maybe, or items, or sacred places with regular sacrifices. Something that can be destroyed. Should that be done before the dungeon realises what is happening, it will lose its ability to finely manipulate the physical corridors and whatnot; instead, it might make the entire area subject to a sufficiently destructive earthquake. (With Bond-esque explosions, should it seem fitting.)

Looking forward to future installments.

Sympathy for the Devil – Rolling Stones
Behind Blue Eyes – The Who
I Can’t Decide – Scissor Sisters

You probably haven’t heard the last one. Go here to see a brief snip of a Doctor Who episode to see how I was introduced to it. The young guy in the suit is “The Master” (a villain) and everyone else is a pawn or enemy under his thumb.

For the first adventure, what do you say to throwing an unusual team-up against the town? Say a couple races that normally hate each other. The kind where if one were burning the other wouldn’t cross the road right away to get to them because they’d need to grab some marshmallows first. As a possible example, maybe kobolds and whatever passes for evil elves these days. But make the kobolds the dominant partners. Gradually your guys will kill their way to the top of the heap while you drop little clues all along the way that these guys couldn’t possibly have dreamed this up by themselves.

As far as symbols, if I were you and wanting to NOT draw anything I think I’d just do a google image seearch for “triskelion” and gleefully grab away. If one demihuman tribe uses a simple triskelion of curved lines which blend into a circular border and a mysterious cult in the city uses a central eye with three bent legs emerging from it then it might take your players awhile to really link them, although a feeling of vague similarity would probably exist from the start. And it’s a form of spiral so it should feel right for a chaos beast.

For some reason my thought process is going from “dungeon + town = yum” to visualizing masses of rats boiling up from underneath the city to devour it.

Sorry if this feels disjointed, had a bunch of different thoughts on this one and kept getting distracted. Also, not quite certain which direction you want to go with it yet so not sure which way to pitch.

I still play this game. Once a year I install it and rush through the campaign. Then I uninstall it, and stay away for a few months before I come back to it.

My favorite CG movie from this game is the Ogre praticing nunchaku with chickens… lol.

And for the campaign. If you take the Paranoia style, I will even more be interrested by it (like if it was possible!). Paranoia is an awesome game. You get to kill PCs, PCs trying to kill other PCs… PCs trying to kill PCs while getting killed by the DM… hehehe HAHAHA -EVIL LAUGH!-

I assure you. I always take medicine before I DM a game. I SWEAR!

I’m glad you like the idea, it really is going strong right now and my players are brimming with enthusiasm about starting the campaign. In fact I’ve got 3 of them showing up for an unofficial pilot game this Friday…

Your symbol idea is a great idea, I’ll need to start drawing some models methinks.

…now if only I could get inspiration for the actual adventure.

The idea being that perhaps at first players dont recognize that they’re seeing the same thing over and over, but over time see the central theme.

Hallucination induced by the dungeon is a GREAT idea especially if I wanna run a WTF session à la Dungeonland.

Great call Buzz.